Immediate climate action crucial, experts warn before UN conference

By Theresa Braine

|New York Daily News|

Dec 02, 2018 | 10:00 PM

Petteri Taalas, WMO Secretary-General, speaks about the provisional statement on the state of the climate in 2018, (Martial Trezzini / AP)

With humanity at a critical juncture regarding climate change, four former presidents of the U.N. climate talks have called the situation urgent, saying that “decisive action in the next two years will be crucial.”

Climate experts are so worried about what we’re collectively doing to our planet—our only planet—that some negotiators convened a day early for the 24th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP24), reported BBC News.

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As nearly 30,000 participants descend on Katowice, Poland, for COP24, the focus is on carbon neutrality and gender equality.

“The science is clear. Without rapid cuts in CO2 and other greenhouse gases, climate change will have increasingly destructive and irreversible impacts on life on Earth. The window of opportunity for action is almost closed,” said World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Secretary-General Petteri Taalas in a statement leading up to the conference, referring to a report issued last month by the United Nations weather agency.

Also last month, the U.S. government released its own climate assessment full of similar predictions about climate change’s effect on health, environment overall, and the economy. It was a direct counterpoint to President Donald Trump’s assertions that human activity does not necessarily cause climate change (if, he says, that is happening at all).

The science is clear, as the experts keep emphasizing: It’s urgent to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade, given that we are already seeing the effects of 1 degree of warming in the form of more extreme weather, rising sea levels, melting Arctic sea ice and fierce wildfires. And we are not doing it fast enough, scientists warn.

“Every bit of additional warming brings greater risks,” the U.N. said in a statement describing the importance of COP24.

The meeting brings together heads of state and government from 29 countries, according to the BBC. They will give statements and take stock of their progress in reaching the goals of the COP22 meeting, held in Paris in 2015. There, it was agreed that countries would take drastic measures to keep warming below 1.5 degrees Centigrade. The reports issued since say that collectively, the world is not on track to do that.

Trump has said he’ll pull the U.S. out of the agreement. However, since he can’t leave until 2020, the U.S. will participate in COP24. There is no time to waste.

“It is worth repeating once again that we are the first generation to fully understand climate change and the last generation to be able to do something about it,” Taalas said.